Sedimentary response to tectonism in the extensional Chihuahua trough, Cretaceous of Southern North America
Abstract
During the Jurassic and Cretaceous, the Chihuahua Trough formed an extensional basin, extending from the Gulf of Mexico to Southern Arizona, along the Present Border of the United States and Mexico. West of the Big Bend of Texas, Jurassic and Cretaceous sediments are less than 150 m thick, and in many areas are absent. The sedimentary package thickens to over 3km within the trough. The Albian Cox Sandstone is one of the most areally extensive formations and consists of interbedded fluvial coastal and shallow marine sandstones and shales. In this study area, shales (10-70 m) are thicker more than sandstone beds (2-10 m). This unit is overlain by Finlay formation, a fine crystalline gray limestone and underlain by Bluff Mesa formation, a fossiliferous shallow marine limestone. Cross-bedded, brown, fine to medium grained sandstone, interbedded with siltstone, shale and limestone are characteristic lithology of the Cox. The Indio Mountains of Trans-Pecos Texas offer an ideal location to study how this package accommodates the deformation associated with the subsiding Chihuahua trough. A continuous outcrop extends over 30 km oblique to the basin margin and thickens from approximately 375 m on the northern side to 437 m on the southern side of the 10 km section studied so far. One important mechanism is rotation of the strata into the basin, followed by truncation along sequence boundaries. The lower two sequence in the southern Indio mountains are rotated down to the basin relative to Finlay. The lowest sequences thicken from an erosional pinch out towards the South. Shale beds thicken within the rotated strata and accommodate some of the tilting. For example, Thickness of the shale bed varies from 18 m to 70 m within a 2 km distance. However, erosional truncation of the tilted strata accounts for most of the increases in thickness within sequences. The base of the formation has been rotated about 6 degrees south relative to the top of the formation. Another observed mechanism is growth across syn-depositional faults. Three faults have been identified so far. Two are obliquely antithetic to the basin margin and one is synthetic. Offsets decrease from several 10’s of meters at the base of the Cox Fm to less than 10 m at the top. The top of the overlying Finlay formation is not offset.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2009
- Bibcode:
- 2009AGUFM.T33C1926B
- Keywords:
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- 8169 TECTONOPHYSICS / Sedimentary basin processes